Information rules: a strategic guide to the network economy
Information rules: a strategic guide to the network economy
Law-governed interaction: a coordination and control mechanism for heterogeneous distributed systems
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
Economic mechanism design for computerized agents
WOEC'95 Proceedings of the 1st conference on USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce - Volume 1
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We compare two distinct (and, apparently, mutually exclusive) models of collaboration support-mechanisms, and evaluate their applicability to Internet-based economic exchanges. The first model is grounded on a bottom-up approach where decision-making is completely decentralized and global-order self-organizes out of multiplex local interactions among numerous and interdependent agents. The second model focuses on centralized, hierarchical institutions that coordinate and regulate individual behaviour to conform, at higher level of aggregation, to the system functional-requirements. In the first model, socially efficient exchange outcomes are possible but problematic, and eventual cooperation can be said to be 'trust-based', in contrast to the 'contract-based' solution of the second model. We claim that both models have significant drawbacks, and we propose a third model which grounds on the concept of 'intermediation' a semi-decentralized approach to the problem of cooperation, which envisages in a proper mix of identity-management and trust-support mechanisms the key-tools for the emergence of an efficient and feasible trade-off between trust and control in complex socio/technical systems.